blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

I have been following the debate on the Catholic identity of the Ateneo de Manila University and I immediately recalled my English lit class in "Godless" University of the Philippines where we had to read selections from John Henry Newman's "The Idea of a University". Our devout Methodist professor required us to really understand it. Newman is considered as one of the sylists of apologetic literature and the Essay in English. All the quotes in this post were cut and pasted from Newman's essay. Now that I have made the attribution, I wish to be absolved of the sin of plagiarism! The Oxford don and Anglican priest, John Henry Newman  is the most famous of Anglican "returnees" to the Roman Church. He is also one of the greatest theologians in 19th Century England.  As a consequence of becoming a Roman Catholic he had to leave Oxford. For those of my friends who are associated with the University of the Philippines, this is like being banished fro...

I concede.. It is not LIKE  the Galileo affair of the 1600s but it is notable since this is beginning to look like the first major Church vs. secularism tiff in almost 60 years in PH. And like the Galileo affair this present one involves Jesuits and Roman bishops in high and low places, or better yet in all SORTS of PLACES! Jesuits always find themselves in the darndest places! And like the Inquisition's missing out of the truth of Eppur si Muove , the Roman bishops fall into the same old trap! I am referring to Jesuit padre, renowned atmospheric scientist and Ateneo de Manila's President Fr Jett Villarin and his official statement adhering to official Church teaching and how it situates Ateneo's professors who don't agree with the Church on the issue King's  Great Matter. Prof Randy David comments most interestingly on the issue not by rehashing and flogging the anti vs pro RH debate but by commenting on academic freedom in a Catholic affiliated university. ...

My lectures to undergraduates on academic freedom is within the subject of the history of science in relation to the history of the Roman Church.  The thesis is that the this freedom is at the root for the esse or being of the university. The concept of academic freedom was first formalized in German medieval universities but essentially was practiced in all of Europe's ancient universities, Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Palencia, Heidelberg etc The Roman Catholic Church in fact founded all of these universities and the liberties granted by the secular powers and the Church were respected. Some of the universities like Oxford and Cambridge passed into Protestant hands in the Reformation but still they held on to these liberties. Thus with academic freedom which extends to professors and their students (with their inherent rights), science and the arts flourished. Without these freedoms, the freedom of research would have been curtailed. As paradoxically it sounds to 21st s...

I do not know James Soriano but those netizens who know him say he is an Ateneo de Manila senior. The essay he wrote for the Manila Bulletin is honest on his experience in the use of English and Filipino in Filipino society. The mass of Filipino society especially on the net will label him as conyo , but we cannot fault him for that. The class stratification in Philippine society is sharply demarcated by language use as this blogger writes . This cuts across regional and cultural boundaries. Since in almost all political jurisdictions, those who are elected to public office belong to the elite, we can observe that signs in public buildings are in English or may be bilingual but the sign in a Philippine language is less conspicuous than the one in English. I have seen and stared at these while peeing  in countless toilets in the Visayas and Mindanao, where a warning (pahibalo) in not flushing the toilet will result in a fine. The warning is in large font English and the one in ...

I was in Cebu for a meeting when I heard about the tragedy that befell Ateneo grade school pupil Amiel Alcantara on the school's parking lot last Tuesday. The boy was run over by a van driven by woman who was picking her son from the school. The boy was declared dead on arrival in a nearby hospital. The tragedy was made even more disturbing because it was witnessed by the boy's siblings and the nanny who pushed the other kids from the rushing van. She was also injured. The incident brought back memories of a loss we experienced 30 years ago in March 1979. One of my classmates named Renato drowned in a friend's pool on his birthday. The death was an accident and my whole elementary school was in shock. The teachers had to go on counselling mode and they told the children that no one wanted this tragedy and that it was an accident. No one is to blame not even the kids who attended the birthday party. The teachers said that the best way we can deal with it is to learn from th...

The word coño is Pinoy slang for an Anglophone, sometimes Hispanophone person who studies in an "exclusive school", chauffered, and lives in a gated community. Among residents and businesses on Katipunan Road, Quezon City, they cause a periodic,thrice a day horrendous traffic snarl! Coño is not the word that best describes the traffic snarl of kilometres long magnitude. In Spain people use "coñazo" which translates to "extreme annoyance". The literal meaning is "what a giant cunt!" Anyway the reason for the snarl is due to the inordinate number of cars (many of them ferrying one student each) that try to enter the few gates of Ateneo and Miriam universities. This has irked MMDA 's chairman Bayani Fernando for years. He has tried his signature U turns, but that failed. He tried to uproot the trees on traffic islands on the road (so that more road space is available to motorists). He was blocked by "coño" environmentalists. Bayani th...